Abstract
The purpose of this research was to identify how the knowledge creation process (KCP) takes place among Suyusama, an organization that carries out specific extension functions and advisory services, and the rural communities in Nariño, Colombia. Specifically, the study determined how new knowledge was created, disseminated, and materialized into products, services or systems. Colombia, as a country emerging from conflict, faces considerable challenges to improve rural livelihoods in its agricultural sector. To gain productivity and food security within a sustainable management of natural resources requires a conceptual framework for planning and implementing programs to strengthen agricultural extension and advisory systems. Grounded Theory Methodology was employed in order to create theory from the systematic analysis of data, obtained from field observations and in-depth interviews with members of the local community organizations. The result was a theoretical explanation of the KCP that occurs from the autonomous work of the community with the accompaniment of a mentor organization in a multicultural and diverse meeting scenario, where the dialogue of knowledge and cooperation is promoted by integrating traditional and contemporary knowledge. This work is also an academic contribution to exemplify the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge and the interorganizational ontological dimension in which a knowledge -creation spiral takes place in a rural context.
Highlights
For McNamara and Moore (2017, p. xi), the emergence of internal conflicts in a country has direct links to poverty, hunger and lack of agricultural development, which leads to perceptions of injustice and social inequality and generates fertile grounds for conflict
The aim was to identify how the knowledge creation process (KCP) takes place among small-scale farm households composed by peasants and indigenous people and Suyusama, an organization that carries out specific extension functions and advisory services in order to improve their livelihoods -or to achieve their dear life- in the rapidly changing global economy
“Mentor Organization” is the central concept that arises from the theorization achieved through the use of Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM) in the study of the inter-organizational KCP in rural post-conflict settings, and it can be evident and useful in similar conditions where communities experience the need of developing strategies that contribute efficiently to building local and regional economic alternatives so that they have the possibility of moving from a subsistence to a construction economy of their ‘dear life” in a sustainable way
Summary
For McNamara and Moore (2017, p. xi), the emergence of internal conflicts in a country has direct links to poverty, hunger and lack of agricultural development, which leads to perceptions of injustice and social inequality and generates fertile grounds for conflict. It is important to study the inter-organizational KCPs in the territory to detect the types of standards and norms used in these processes to achieve the objectives proposed within the programs. For this reason, this research uses as a conceptual framework the KC model proposed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) and Nonaka (2007), that can be useful to explain the capacity of the territory to generate new knowledge, disseminate it among the people and materialize it in products, services and systems, which is the key to innovation. The link between organizational KC and regional KC was first established by Florida (1995) using the learning region as a concept that explains its function as collector or repository of knowledge and ideas and provider of the environment or infrastructure underlying for the flow of knowledge and learning, as well as being an important source of innovation and economic growth
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